Once you're at speed on a motorcycle, you don't need your hands on the handlebars to keep the bike stable. It's only at low speed when it gets awkward ... but Honda has a robo bike which can fix that. (Gizmodo: Honda's New Experimental Motorcycle Can Balance All By Itself Like Magic)
Check out the video in the article but this only looks like a device for people who shouldn't be riding at all. The effect only works when the bike is doing three mph or less but why should I have any confidence you can ride at high speed when you can't handle the bike going slowly.
when the experimental motorcycle Honda has developed is moving at speeds of less than three miles per hour—like when pulling out of a garage or starting and stopping at a street light—the angle of the front fork is automatically lowered to help improve stability. At the same time, minute left and right steering adjustments are automatically made to the front wheel to ensure the motorcycle always maintains its balance—with or without a rider on board.
Gizmodo
Maybe some of you are familiar with Gibson's self-tuning Peace Les Paul.
Note: these guys are strongly promoting the guitar but they present quite a bit of information about it.
They relate tuning the guitar as some loathsome task but most guitarists rarely use alternate tuning and, if they do, it will probably be a Drop D and that may seem like it means a lot but doing it only requires dropping the low E string down to a D. That's hardly a blistering ordeal.
The Peace Les Paul goes for about $1500 US so it's not much more than a Les Paul without automatic tuning.
Here at the Rockhouse, we're highly-enthusiastic about new technology carrying us into the future but there's also technology which happens just because engineers found a way to do it and that doesn't necessarily mean it has any practical value.
Ed: you're just a crank who would not like this technology no matter what it does!
That's not true since most of my ideas are regarded as too far out to be possible. Sometimes things need to stay traditional since you shouldn't be swinging a leg over a bike if you can't really ride it and cutting out tuning a guitar eliminates some of the discipline music absolutely requires. I don't see either of these things as the future so much as they represent engineering gimcrackery.
Check out the video in the article but this only looks like a device for people who shouldn't be riding at all. The effect only works when the bike is doing three mph or less but why should I have any confidence you can ride at high speed when you can't handle the bike going slowly.
when the experimental motorcycle Honda has developed is moving at speeds of less than three miles per hour—like when pulling out of a garage or starting and stopping at a street light—the angle of the front fork is automatically lowered to help improve stability. At the same time, minute left and right steering adjustments are automatically made to the front wheel to ensure the motorcycle always maintains its balance—with or without a rider on board.
Gizmodo
Maybe some of you are familiar with Gibson's self-tuning Peace Les Paul.
Note: these guys are strongly promoting the guitar but they present quite a bit of information about it.
They relate tuning the guitar as some loathsome task but most guitarists rarely use alternate tuning and, if they do, it will probably be a Drop D and that may seem like it means a lot but doing it only requires dropping the low E string down to a D. That's hardly a blistering ordeal.
The Peace Les Paul goes for about $1500 US so it's not much more than a Les Paul without automatic tuning.
Here at the Rockhouse, we're highly-enthusiastic about new technology carrying us into the future but there's also technology which happens just because engineers found a way to do it and that doesn't necessarily mean it has any practical value.
Ed: you're just a crank who would not like this technology no matter what it does!
That's not true since most of my ideas are regarded as too far out to be possible. Sometimes things need to stay traditional since you shouldn't be swinging a leg over a bike if you can't really ride it and cutting out tuning a guitar eliminates some of the discipline music absolutely requires. I don't see either of these things as the future so much as they represent engineering gimcrackery.
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